Operating Review

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Respect for our environment

As a leading UK retailer we have a responsibility to minimise any potential adverse impacts of our operations. We’ve invested more than £15 million in energy efficiency projects since 2002 and Sainsbury’s won the Carbon Management City of London Liveable City Award 2006 through our innovative projects to reduce emissions.

Much of our work is about good housekeeping and almost all our large supermarkets now have intranet linked, automated building controls to allow us to improve efficiency and manage power loads so we can further reduce our energy costs.

Nearly 80% of Sainsbury’s own brand Easter egg packaging is now recyclable, re-usable or compostable

A big issue for customers is the amount of food packaging in use and its environmental impact. We’ve already reduced excessive packaging on many products. Take Easter eggs; since 2004 we have reduced the weight of packaging by up to 87 per cent with the vast majority of the remaining packaging now recyclable, re-usable or compostable.

In September 2006 we announced the removal of 3,550 tonnes of plastic from our output every year. We achieved this by replacing 150 million plastic trays and bags on 500 of our ready meal and organic food products with ‘compostable packaging’, the friendliest form of packaging for the environment according to the Women’s Institute. Instead of plastic, the packaging uses maize, sugarcane or starch so that it can break down naturally in a garden compost heap.

In Sept 2006 we announced our friendliest packaging to date

We share our customers’ belief that plastic bags contribute to long-term damage to the environment so in September we launched a new carrier bag to replace our previous free carrier. A third of the new orange bag is made from recycled material and it can, in turn, be recycled and made into a new bag. This has saved 1.7 billion old style carrier bags and 6,500 tonnes of plastic every year. We’re still the only UK supermarket to offer customers a free carrier bag with a high proportion of recycled material, but we urge others to follow this lead and cut down on the use of plastic and materials sent to landfill.

We have promoted re-usable shopping bags since the mid 1990’s and in November 2006 we teamed up with Arts Council England to produce limited edition re-usable bags designed by well-known artists. The bags were incredibly popular and sold out in 12 weeks. We were also the obvious outlet for a similar environment-friendly bag designed by leading accessories designer Anya Hindmarch, in collaboration with WAWWD. The bags went on sale at the beginning of April and sold out within an hour.